Febui ary 3, 190o.] 



SCIENCE. 



in the case of the meter, hiter determina- 

 tions showed that the kilogram was not 

 exactly equal to the mass of a cubic deci- 

 meter of water as was intended, and hence 

 the platinum secondary standard was 

 adopted as a primary standard of mass and 

 no further attempt made to malie it a nat- 

 ural unit. All other countries using the 

 metric system use carefully constructed 

 cci^ies (;f this original kilogram as their 

 standards of mass. Ihe process of weigh- 

 ing is even more accurate than the com- 

 parison of lengths, so that the standard 

 kilograms of the various countries of the 

 world are practically perfect duplicates of 

 the original and of each other. 



In 1875 a conference of the representa- 

 tives of seventeen nations was held in Paris 

 and a permanent international bureau of 

 weights and measures was established and 

 is still maintained. It is located at Sevres, 

 near Paris, and is supported jointly by the 

 participating nations. Its duties are to 

 care for the fundamental standards of 

 length and mass, to furnish accurately ad- 

 justed copies of the same, and to compare 

 standards which may be returned from 

 time to time. Some other testing is done, 

 including the calibration of thermometers. 

 The work is of the highest order of accu- 

 racy and leaves little to be desired so far 

 as standards of length and mass are con- 

 cerned. The metric system has been adopt- 

 ed by nearly all the civilized nations of 

 the world, excepting Great Britain and her 

 colonies and the United States, and is uni- 

 versally used throughout the world for sci- 

 entific purposes. The electrical units are 

 all based on the metric system and hence 

 electrical engineers employ the metric sys- 

 tem almost exclusively, even in this coun- 

 try. The gain to science and commerce due 

 to the adoption of the metric system can 

 scarcely be overestimated and it is to be 

 hoped that it will soon be adopted by the 

 English-speaking countries of the world. 



The avoirdupois standard for the United 

 States was defined in 1830 as 7000/5760 

 of the Troy standard pound of the mint, 

 which in turn was a copy of the British 

 Troy pound, derived from the standard of 

 Queen Elizabeth made in 1588. The latter 

 was derived from the standard of Edward 

 III., and this is said to have come from, 

 the city of Troyes, France, hence the name, 

 Troy pound. The metric system was legal- 

 ized in the United States in 1866, and the 

 meter was declared to be equivalent to 

 89.37 inches and the kilogram to 2.204 

 pounds. The international bureau began 

 its work in 1879. The iridio-platinum 

 pi'ototypes ( f the metric standards were 

 received in this country in 1889. These 

 were so much superior as standards to the 

 brass standard pound and the bi'onze 

 yard, that in 1893 the metric standards; 

 were adopted as fundamental standards by 

 the United States and the pound and yard 

 were defined in terms of them. Thus the 

 metric system is not only legalized in this 

 country, but owr fundamental standards 

 are the meter and kilogram and all our 

 weights and measures are derived from 

 these metric standards using the legal 

 equivalents. 



Few people, perhaps, realize how need- 

 lessly complex our system of weights and 

 measures really is. Instead of a single 

 unit of weight and of length with multiples 

 and submultiples having ratios of ten, and 

 a unit of volume simply related to the unit 

 of length, as is the case in the metric sys- 

 tem, we have a multiplicity of units and all 

 kinds of odd ratios for the multiples and 

 submultiples. I beg your indulgence for 

 a moment while I remind you of some of 

 the absurdities of our system. But first 

 recall how much simpler and more con- 

 venient our decimal coinage is than the 

 English coinage. Nothing could be simpler 

 than the expression of values in dollars 

 and cents; the use of pounds, shillings and 



